Octavo call

I’ve joined the editorial team at Octavo, and we have a request for art. From Jeff Calhoun (the email in the post is Jeff’s):

The Alsop Review online publishing venture is starting back up again, and we need your help! Among other things, we need a banner graphic for Octavo. If you click on the Alsop Review link at the upper-right corner of the Gaz, it will take you to the new Alsop Review. Check out the banner graphic, its great, isn’t it! Then click on the sidebar link to Octavo…ah, it’s barren of any art! We’d like that to change.

The theme for Octavo is “poems that dare to be big and loud”. We’d like a banner graphic that speaks to that theme, maybe a brass band or a trumpet. Of course, we’re open to other creative interpretations of the theme. So, if you are an artist and are interested in helping out, please PM me or email me at we.were.meant.to.live [AT] gmail (dot) com. Thanks!

So, if you’re arty, please holler!

A long-term reading goal

In one of my Goodreads groups, a clever person had the idea of each of us challenging ourselves to read a book by an author from every country. Obviously, this is a big challenge, and not something that can be banged out in three minutes, or even three months (for most of us!)

If you want to see my list so far (it’s fairly scanty, still) go here.

And if you’re a reader and you haven’t joined Goodreads, you might be missing out on one of the best tools for readers I’ve seen in some time.

The draaaaama!

A co-worker has been arrested for drug possession. When they searched his house, they found he had been stealing explosives from work. Why? “To make fireworks.”

It’s a wonder co-worker was just arrested and not blown to smithereens.

Stupid co-worker.

Read a blog. Learn German.

As you may have noticed, I’m using a German template for this site.  I figured most of the instructions were fairly self-explanatory, though I have pasted the English in for a few of them.  Some?  I have no idea what they say, so I’m leaving them alone until it requires me to find a German person or get a dictionary or something.

Never let someone tell you blogging ain’t edumacational.

So, I’m willing to admit I might be a bit morbid

We were driving up the road and I saw a cross in a field–a homemade-looking thing about 40 feet from the berm.  I wondered who had died there.  It was too far away from the road for it to have been a traffic accident.

So then I had to start wondering who had died everywhere.  How about here?  Here?  Here or here?  How many people have died in the general vicinity of my desk?  How many have died in the US?  In the world?  What are the chances if I go outside (or heck, if I stay inside) and I throw a dart that I’ll hit the very spot that someone, sometime, died?

And why do I think about these things?  Why can’t I think about fruit?  Or pelicans?

Rise and shine and shoot me with gunsie, gunsies!

My childhood was marred by a song. The rise and shine song.

My parents thought it was hilarious to wake their children with the rise and shine song.

As the years passed, the song has become something of a family legend, and each subsequent generation is again tormented with it.

A couple of days ago, my niece sent me an email with a lyric from the song in the title. I’ve been singing it ever since.

And in the spirit of giving, I sang the song to a coworker who has also been singing it ever since.

Behold, it is “Rise and Shine”:

Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory
Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory
Rise and shine and *clap* give God the glory, glory
Children of the Lord!

God said to Noah there will be a floody, floody
God said to Noah there will be a floody, floody
Keep your children *clap* out of the muddy, muddy
Children of the Lord!

Then God ordered Noah to build him an arky, arky
God ordered Noah to build him an arky, arky
Build it out of *clap* hickory barky, barky
Children of the Lord!

Look it up. Hear the melody. You, too, will be caught in its spell.